> well over 300 engineers for a relatively simple Saas
This would be a huge red flag to me. As a solo-founder I would assume that I'm overlooking something or incorrectly defining "simple". If it is really simple and they are allocating that many engineers to solve the problem, then they'll eventually figure it out and downsize. Then you're competing with a more experienced and focused company. On the flip side, if you're solving a problem they think is hard, then an acquisition may be in your future.
That sort of thinking is what got a newly competitor a nice chunk of the market.
I'll say it again, one of THEIR OTHER PRODUCTS IS A BLACK HOLE.
So what I'm trying to say is, their primary product is a relatively easy SaaS to make. They made a huge mistake in building a secondary product in their offering and thus requires the 300 engineers.
Domain knowledge is something else that I and the other newly competitor has. HN developers who think they can build applications in a weekend completely omit this point.
Domain knowledge is what makes something easy, compared to someone who doesn't have it and then thinks it's hard.
Out of those 300 developers, how many in total have the domain knowledge. Not many I am betting.
> Then you're competing with a more experienced and focused company.
Yahoo was experienced and look how that turned out. Same goes for Bing.
As a company, you throw resources (money) at solving a particular problem.
You are hoping that as a company, you can accrue enough customers to cover that spend.
Should another company come in and then disrupt your efforts, you have two choices. Either hire more engineers and develop more features, thus incurring more costs. Or you lower your pricing and hope your competitor is bleeding faster than you are.
As a company with a black hole, if another competitor isn't bleeding and pushing out more features and gaining your customers. You'll then do something drastic like buy another company.
This is what actually happened in that space. The only problem, is that it shows your competitors you have no ideas left. The company is effectively a zombie. It will collapse, it's a only matter of time.
I think the candy coated term used in this community is "pre-revenue". Multiply that by $35-45m per year in Engineer salaries and you have a giant black hole. For money.
This would be a huge red flag to me. As a solo-founder I would assume that I'm overlooking something or incorrectly defining "simple". If it is really simple and they are allocating that many engineers to solve the problem, then they'll eventually figure it out and downsize. Then you're competing with a more experienced and focused company. On the flip side, if you're solving a problem they think is hard, then an acquisition may be in your future.